


Intrusive Thoughts

by Nitrobot



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Dinner, Epilogue, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Lust, Symbiotes make good wingmen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 12:25:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15908235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: After everything that happened over the last month; when Drake’s body was found in the ruins of the Life Foundation’s labs and reputation, when the repairs for his apartment were finally finished, when the dust had settled and he was sure no one else would try and take him away, Eddie had thought he could at least have a normal dinner with his ex-girlfriend.Well, his ex and his parasite.





	Intrusive Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: this was written and published before the movie came out, so it doesn't exactly line up with canon. I'm lazy so instead of rewriting it I'm gonna leave it as it is and write something new to follow on from the movie.

Eddie was halfway through his second helping of steak when he noticed that Ann had hardly touched her first. She’d raise her fork, prod at the soft meat like her plate was a dissection table, maybe feebly nibble at it, before setting it back down again. Like she was stuck in a loop, with each repetition book-ended by a nervous glance across the table that never lasted longer than a second. Eddie swallowed, only feeling half of the food hit the pit of his own stomach.

“You alright, Ann?”

Her head snapped up, as if linked to a wire that had just been yanked on. She cleared her throat, though nothing had gone down it yet, and focused her attention back on her full plate.

“It keeps looking at me,” she said quietly, without looking back at it. Eddie paused, lowering the fork he was just about to shove into his mouth, then turned to the face hanging over his shoulder. Above the watery-black slime emerging from him to suspend it there, the symbiote was indeed staring at her; jagged teeth on full display below white eyes that he’d spent more often looking through than his own recently. It oozed its fluid gaze over to him, flicking its tongue out once before turning right back to Ann. Eddie shrugged with his free shoulder.

“It’s just trying to be friendly,” he said, taking a bigger mouthful to try and distract it.

“It looks like it wants to _eat_ me,” Ann insisted, still whispering like she didn’t want it to hear her. As if it _couldn’t_ hear her if all she did was whisper. But it did hear her. And Eddie heard it, too.

 ** _“But we do want to eat her, don’t we, Eddie?”_** The symbiote’s mouth didn’t have to move for it to speak. Eddie heard its growl rattle in his skull, throbbing down his spine. He’d heard it a lot since he’d first introduced it to Ann. **_“I’m sure she’d be dripping with delicious juices if you’d let us take her…”_**

As usual, he forced out the ravenous snarl with a shake of his head. “Nonsense,” he told Ann, faking a smile. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s drooling all over your shoulder,” she pointed out.

“That’s my fault. It always does that when I eat.” He shoveled in another mouthful of food to prove his point. “Food is fantastic, by the way,” he mumbled through half-chewed steak. He didn’t used to like it rare, but nowadays the taste seemed to agree with both of them.

**_“She would taste better, I’m sure.”_ **

Eddie ignored it, just as he ignored the saliva dripping all over his shirt sleeve. He could wash it out. Saliva was a lot easier to clean than blood. He knew that well enough by now. Could still smell it on himself, or maybe that was just the steak.

Or maybe Ann could smell it as well. She finally gave up on her dinner, dropping the cutlery in defeat. “You can have the rest of mines if you want. I’m not that hungry.”

“You sure?” Eddie had always known her to be a light eater, especially when she was studying for her bar exam, but he’d wanted tonight to be special. This was the victory lap. The moment they could all relax and accept that what happened really did happen, and they really did manage to get through it in one piece (well, two pieces in his case). When she agreed to this dinner, he’d actually thought that it was possible. That ‘normal’ was something he could realistically look forward to.

Then again, Ann must have had that exact same hope for tonight… she just wasn’t expecting ‘the alien’ to join them. Even though he’d explained it to her, what he was now, what _they_ were together. Well, he’d explained as much as he was willing to admit. As much as he thought she could handle for now. But even then, that little bit seemed to be too much. Nowadays she always looked like she was fighting off the urge to be sick, and he didn’t blame her.

But even if she ended up throwing it all up when he left, seeing her eat something would’ve made him feel a lot better. With such delicious food she’d managed to make, it was a shame that she couldn’t enjoy any of it.

“Don’t let the symbiote put you off,” Eddie said. “Look, I’ll tell it to go away.”

A dark chuckle echoed in his brain as he said it. **“** ** _Can’t get rid of me that easily.”_ **

_‘Just hide yourself,’_ he hissed back silently _. ‘Go wherever you usually go to piss me off.’_

The symbiote gurgled in protest, but eventually it pulled back under his skin and retreated to his stomach. Digestion would hopefully occupy it for the rest of the evening.

“See? Like it isn’t even here.” Eddie hoped Ann couldn’t see his muscles twitching as the symbiote skimmed over them. The bloodstream was a much easier way to get around for both of them, but Eddie _did_ tell it to go wherever it pissed him off most. He had to switch his fork over to the other hand in case he ended up stabbing himself with it. But at least Ann was eating now. Still small bites, but it was better than none at all.

“I just don’t get how you can be… _comfortable_ with that _thing_ inside you,” she confessed, looking up from her plate much more often now. “Especially with who put it in you in the first place…”

“Just takes some getting used to,” Eddie lied. It took a _lot_ of getting used to. But even then, not as much as he’d thought it would. It still scared him how quickly he’d accepted the symbiote when it was clear it wasn’t going to leave.

“But _how_ ?” Ann pressed, not believing him and being completely right not to. “How do you ‘get used’ to something like _that_?”

Eddie pulled his hand through his hair, waiting for another muscle spasm to strike so he was forced to smack himself in the face. But it didn’t come. The food had finally caught its attention.

“It’s not all bad,” he answered. “I’ll never be lonely again, for one thing.” He found it quite funny. Ann didn’t.

“I’m serious, Eddie.”

“So am I.” He leaned forward, punctuating his seriousness with a hand stretched out towards her, gesturing his sincerity with each word he said. “Trust me, Ann. It could’ve been a lot worse. I’m just grateful we got out of it alive.”

He let his hand lay open on the table; not asking her to take it, just offering it there in case she wanted to. As Ann silently weighed in on his verdict his stomach growled, not from any lingering hunger. **_“She has a pretty mouth, Eddie.”_ **

She smiled with that pretty mouth, lightly squeezing his palm with her fingers. His heartrate swelled around the black inside him. “I guess I’d rather it was with you than some psycho like Drake…”

**_“Would look even prettier wrapped tight around our cock.”_ **

“Exactly.” Eddie thought he hid the fact that he almost choked on the last of his dinner rather well. “But like I told you, that’s all over now. Anyone else who even knew it existed is locked up or dead. And it’s not dangerous anymore. I can control it now.” He was always quite good at lying, just not usually for anyone else’s sake but his own. Whether or not Ann had ever managed to decipher when he was hiding the truth, she didn’t give up her smile. Red, soft lips, lightly flushed.

**_“You’re thinking about it.”_ **

He could still remember how they felt.

**_“You’re considering it… getting aroused already.”_ **

_‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’_ Even if Eddie was really able to control the symbiote, like most men he still didn’t have much control over when he got erections.

“I’ll clear the table,” he said, eternally grateful that it was tall enough to still hide most of him when he stood up.

 **_“We want to pin her to it,”_ ** the dark growled, its saliva running thick in his veins. **_“Make her scream our name.”_ ** Eddie was about to scream if it didn’t shut up.

“Thanks.” Ann sounded like she actually meant it, handing off her half-finished plate to him.

“Least I could do.” He flashed a smile because he couldn’t help himself, before he rushed into the safety of her kitchen. Plates down, door closed, head in his hands. Hands in his hair. Alien in his bones, saying terrible things about the woman he loved.

Not untrue things. But still.

“You really can’t behave yourself for one night?” he hissed. The symbiote’s chuckle bubbled up his throat as it surged back over his skin, reclaiming its place. There went his idea of punching himself in the stomach while it was still in there.

 **_“Not my fault she has such a strong effect on you.”_ ** It dragged its tongue over its teeth to make them glisten. “ **_Maybe if you’d just get it over with, I wouldn’t have to encourage you.”_ **

“There is nothing to ‘get over with’,” Eddie insisted, pacing the kitchen while avoiding the door. He didn’t trust that he could keep his voice down enough for it to not leak through the cracks. The symbiote gurgled, its fluid head pulling back to watch its agitated host from above.

 ** _“Do you think I was spawned yesterday, Eddie?”_** it asked. ** _“You’ve wanted to fuck her long before I came along.”_**

He made a face, one that couldn’t easily be labelled by what little the symbiote still knew about human emotions. Eddie knew full well that it was disgust, at himself and at the alien he’d brought along. He didn’t even want to know how an alien knew anything about human sex, let alone enough to make him feel so… uncomfortable. The erection was making pacing difficult, so he forced himself to sit down. Legs spaced far apart. The symbiote hovered in front of him, arching over his head from his back.

“Look, if you must know, I _have_ fucked her.” Eddie still grimaced at admitting it like that. “But it was a long time ago, and we don’t do it anymore.”

**_“So? The hard part is over with. Why not simply mate with her again?”_ **

Eddie had yet to figure out how to strangle something that had no tangible mass, but every day he became more determined to. “Okay, I don’t know how it works on other planets you’ve been to, but here on Earth we don’t just fuck out of nowhere. Not… usually, at least.”

**_“Fine, fine. What else must be done first?”_ **

“It’s not that simple!” Eddie groaned, burying his face in a nest of fingers that pulled wearily at the skin. “Me and Ann… we _were_ a couple. But we agreed to separate. You can’t just jump back into a relationship after something like that.”

No matter how well it ended. No matter much you wanted to. The symbiote cocked its head, twirling on its tendril.

**_“Yet here you two are, once again, doing just that.”_ **

“No, no we are not.” Eddie wasn’t dumb enough to kid himself otherwise.

**_“But you are.”_ **

“We are _not_ . This is just two adults, who care about each other, celebrating still being alive after all the bullshit _you_ got us both into.” He pointed at the maw of teeth hanging in front of him like an anglerfish lure, feeling like he was scolding a dog. A dog that wouldn’t stop grinning at him, that was laughing as if contemplating biting his finger off.

**_“If it’s as you say, then why does it all look so similar to how you got her in the first place?”_ **

Eddie paused, as if whatever software his brain was running on had just crashed and wiped his face blank. When it recovered, it picked up from where it left off.

“I told you to stay out of my head.” But it was a half-hearted scold, and the symbiote knew that wasn’t what he was thinking about.

**_“I’m right, then. And since you say I got you both into this... you’re welcome.”_ **

Eddie still had his hand raised toward the symbiote, but he wasn’t looking at it anymore. His gaze drifted to the door, to the woman beyond it. The table beyond it, the small flickering candles set upon the cloth. The dress she wore, long enough to reach her knees but not shy on her neckline. The perfume. How underdressed he’d felt all evening.

“This… _is_ a date.” He exhaled as he said it, his heart deflating only to grow again twice its usual size. As if it had been surrounded by chains before, and now that they were off it was all he could do not to let it burst from his chest. The symbiote liked that thought, chuckling to itself.

 **_“You sound surprised. I’m not._ ** **”** It swirled its head back over his shoulder, to whisper its poison in his ear. **_“I can hear the strain stretching out every word between you both, the way she begs you to talk to her. And the smell…_ ** _”_ It growled as it made Eddie inhale for both of them. **“** **_Unmistakable. The pheromones seeped into the air. The musk between her legs when she’s near us…”_ **

“...Really?” Eddie heard himself choke. Either it was only noticeable to an alien that could do nothing but watch… or he’d spent years stumbling around her because he just hadn’t noticed that she slowed down just for him to catch up to her. It wasn’t lying. It _couldn’t_ lie, not to its host. That much he trusted about it.

 ** _“She wants you, Eddie,”_** the symbiote pressed. **_“Just as you want her. Why not let me make the first move for us?”_**

He gulped, still sweating from the truth soaking into him, and shook his head. “You’re just gonna scare her off.”

**_“She wouldn’t be here if she was so easily scared. Think about it.”_ **

He did, and not because the symbiote made him. She knew what it was. She’d seen what it, what it and he and they together could do, _would_ do if left unchecked… she’d seen it all, and she still agreed to dinner with him. With them.

If she didn’t leave before, she wouldn’t leave now. For whatever reason, despite her misgivings, despite her hesitance and unease, she didn’t mind the alien side of him. Hell, he was surprised she didn’t even mind the human side.

Maybe she was hoping it would push him to give her what they both needed.

There was a knock at the kitchen door, and Eddie jumped from his seat. The symbiote instinctively reeled back under his skin.

“You don’t have to do the dishes, Eddie,” Ann said through the wood, the sound of her voice giving him whiplash. “Just leave them for tomorrow.”

Eddie made some sound of acknowledgement, but he wasn’t really listening to himself.

**_“She wants you to go to her. Take her. Devour her.”_ **

Just when he thought it had died down, the erection was back full force, and mast. Eddie pressed his forehead against the door, resisting the urge to knock his whole head on it. Trying to think about gross things. Things that Venom would do. Things the symbiote would usually make him think about…  

Nope. All it could think about was her. His own memories of her, plucked from his cortex and paraded over his eyes. The one time he wouldn’t have minded grey matter in his teeth, or intestines hanging from black claws. The torture they’d given those who earned it… it was nothing compared to what thinking of her did to him.

But fuck it. If the symbiote was right, an erection would just serve him well tonight. He pushed the door open, and found the dining room dark aside from the candles. She looked over from the couch in the living room, just past the doorway across from him.

“I was gonna have some wine before bed.” She held up her glass, with a second on the table in front of her. “Feel free to join me. Does the… symbiote drink?”

Eddie cleared his throat as he sat beside her, trying not to sink into the couch despite how it wanted him to.

“No reason why it can’t,” he said, taking the glass from her, still sitting with legs far apart.

 _‘Do not blow this for me,’_ his brain hissed in the echo of laughter.

**_“Have some faith in us, Eddie. Whatever you can do… we can do so much better.”_ **

He drank with his ex, and tried to ignore the teeth digging into his skull. The low light hid the black that leaked over his hand as it found hers, fingers folding into thin claws.

But she didn’t seem to mind them much. Not even when, two glasses later, they went under her clothes. Nor did she pull away when the tongue in her mouth went longer than it was when it first went in.

Eddie didn’t remember much about that night. He remembered the morning, though. Realising he wasn’t in his own bed. Seeing those soft lips smiling at him in sleep.

The symbiote stayed silent for once, and Eddie knew what it was waiting patiently for.

 _‘Yeah, okay. Thanks_.’

**_“As I said; you’re welcome.”_ **


End file.
